Publications & Ordering
Winning the Global Talent Showdown
Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses & Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline.
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
Shows why we have entered a significant historical watershed era of rapid changes in jobs and careers.
Discusses the contemporary historical evolution of workforce and talent needs in China, India, Brazil, Germany, Russia, and the United States – a total of 25 nations on four continents.
Explores how the world has moved through five historic labor-market eras.
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Examines how three historic economic forces – technology, demographics, and globalization – are now driving these changes.
Explains contemporary solutions to the current unemployment crisis by profiling Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAIN), broad partnerships that are reconnecting the education-to-employment pipeline between communities and businesses.
See Winning the Global Talent Showdown excerpts on Amazon
Winning the Global Talent Showdown surveys the sorry state of the world talent pipeline. Demographic trends in America, Europe, Russia, and Japan are reducing the pool of new workers. As the global need for talent grows, China and India's educational systems won't be able to produce enough qualified graduates for themselves, let alone the rest of the world. But the heart of the problem is that education-to-employment system worldwide is badly outmoded. We're not producing graduates with the kinds of technical, communications, and thinking skills needed in the 21st century.
But this is fundamentally a book about solutions. It argues that we need to completely reinvent our talent-creation system — and some pioneering efforts are already underway. It describes dozens of "gateways to the future", innovative partnerships in which local governments, schools, businesses, labor unions, parents, training organizations, community activists, and others are collaborating to develop completely new approaches to education. Gordon himself is actively involved in some of these initiatives.
Reviews of Winning the Global Talent Showdown:
"Winning the Global Talent Showdown is recommended for business, education, and community leaders interested in growing a workforce to fit the business world's changing needs."
—ForeWord
"I highly recommend the prophetic, yet highly practical Winning the Global Talent Showdown . . . to anyone seeking to understand the real underlying causes of the global talent shortage. Cutting through the myths, half baked populist slogans, and misinformation, the author not only describes the problems, but also offers cooperative, workable, and effective solutions." For complete review, click here
—Wayne Hurlbert
Blog Business World
"How can learning professionals engage in efforts to rebuild the jobs pipeline? Gordon provides answers to these questions in examining the current state and potential future of the global talent pool. . . . He includes inspirational stories from programs around the world that are creating sustainable talent pools."
—T&D
American Society for
Training & Development
"Effectively highlights the different challenges of North America, Asia, and Europe . . . pinpointing the causes of the 'global talent crunch'. Winning the Global Talent Showdown . . . is definitely engaging. . . and reading it will give you a better understanding on how to recreate the talent system."
—Human Resources (Singapore)
"Winning the Global Talent Showdown offers prescient and futuristic information and thinking about education, work and employment, and careers. [It is] powerful, erudite, purposeful, inspiring! "
—Pat Nellor Wickwire, Ph.D. President
American Association for Career Education
"This 188 page thought-provoking book should be read by anyone interested in helping state organizations or their local community and its education system system to be successful. Read it; share it with others; discuss its content with your colleagues. I agree with the author when he says the time to act is now."
---Peter Gamache
HR Exchange (New Hampshire)
"Gordon gives well supported evidence for the upcoming global worker shortage and practical solutions for alleviating the problem."
---Office Pro
"Gordon provides a compelling road map for the future."
---Engineering News-Record
"Immensely readable."
—Jana Kemp
Idaho Press Tribune
Read economist Morris Bechloss's comments on the relevance of Winning the Global Talent Showdown to the current U.S. employment situation.
For Morris Bechloss's comments, click here
Comments on Winning the Global Talent Showdown:
"Winning the Global Talent Showdown goes way beyond a mere brace of suggestions. Ed Gordon's insightful analyses of the continuing and projected workforce skill deficits are complemented by many practical and common-sense solutions."
—Kevin Hollenbeck,
Assistant Executive Director and Senior Economist
Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
"After taking us on a global tour of talent formation strategies, Ed Gordon encourages us to commit to realistic action steps for leveraging our community's talent resources into a clear and coherent working network. Each community's talent formation is an imperative and an opportunity for all to participate."
—Peggy Luce,
Vice President
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
"A remarkable survey of worldwide efforts to get an efficient workforce. It is probably the only one of its kind on the talent marketplace.
---Hans A. Schiser, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
International Workforce Training & Education
DePaul University, Chicago
"In the best analysis of its kind, Ed Gordon cogently defines the demographic and econmic forces presenting us with unprecedented challenges in creating the workforce we need. He proposes clear, workable solutions for addressing the education, training, and community development systems we require."
—Henry J. Lindborg,
Professor, Marian University
"Technology has exploded our need for talents to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. We must educate to meet that need. Winning shows us how."
—Paul Miller, Partner
Sonnenshein, Nath & Rosenthal
"Gordon's passion for his subject, command of the literature, expert integration of complex issues, and informal style of communicating lure the reader chapter by chapter through a thorough exposition of global workforce conditions, prescriptions for change, and a report on organizations productively preparing for their future."
—Paul Hettich, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, DePaul University
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The 2010 Meltdown
Featured in the Sunday New York Times!
The 2010 Meltdown:
Solving the Impending
Jobs Crisis.
Publisher: Praeger
To see or download a Podcast of an Ed Gordon interview on jobs and careers from Penn State Public Broadcasting, click here.
The 2010 Meltdown issues a wake-up call to overcome the twin economic shocks of baby-boomer retirements and too few younger well-educated people. It details how these trends are creating a labor vacuum in a rising tide of high-skill, technology-related jobs.
- Offers companies outsourcing alternatives
- Spells out solutions to filling high-tech jobs
- Provides answers for finding tomorrow's high-wage careers
The 2010 Meltdown compares and contracts early 20th century technology and the nature of U.S. workforce then with the current consequences of the explosive growth of information technology and the computerization of industry.
The 2010 Meltdown illustrates how the era of Progressive reforms (1890-1920) profoundly changed American education and reformed business practices.
The 2010 Meltdown Meltdown discusses how “Rosie the Riveter” made history during World War II.
The 2010 Meltdown examines the rise and future of China and India as modern economies.
The 2010 Meltdown explores the confusing history of contemporary school reform and its future direction.
See The 2010 Meltdown excerpts on Amazon
Reviews:
"Gordon, business and education consultant, challenges policy makers to address the anticipated shortage of highly educated and technically trained workers.... He describes a cultural lag that has led to "techno-peasants" who drop out of high school, have outdated career skills, and seem destined for low-paying jobs, and a business environment that focuses too much on short-term profits, outsourcing, and importing temporary workers. To produce a more educated and technically skilled workforce, he recommends a cultural change in which parents are more involved in their children's education. He also discusses how community involvement in education can be enhanced with the development of NGOs that involve businesses in local community organizations such as chambers of commerce and service clubs to guide students to new careers... The 2010 Meltdown is especially useful for business professionals, policy makers, and educators. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections."
Choice, March 2006
"Ed Gordon, a business author whose books are filled with examples, illustrations, and explanations that flow from extensive research, has done it again. In this thought-provoking book, Gordon lays out the critical situation employers will face - do face - in finding and holding employees who have the education and training to get the job done.... You can open this book to practically any page and be instantly drawn into the story.... Gordon brings this issue to life. Recommended for business leaders, educators, human resource professionals, politicians, and enlightened citizens who are dedicated to making a difference for the generations that will follow us."
Library Bookwatch/Midwest Book Review
"You can benefit from reading The 2010 Meltdown by Edward Gordon if you:
Recruit and manage employees.
Care about your child's career preparation.
Are an educator or policy-maker concerned about our country's economic future.
Want to counter the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots.
... "Despite some of the bleak findings and comments, Gordon's book is hopeful. He calls for action to avoid a major meltdown in our work force and describes model programs involving partnerships between educators, employers and community organizations that pave the way for others who want to work for change." (See complete Review)
Margo Frey
Milwaukee Sentinel
"Ed Gordon's latest book, The 2010 Meltdown, builds off his earlier success, Skill Wars, and makes a convincing case that organizations failing to be proactive to help create a skilled labor pool may very well face their own demise in the long term."
Richard Melson
Chambridge Forecast Group
"Whether you work in a business, service sector, non-profit organization, governmental agency, or school setting, Gordon's book prompts critical thinking about where we are headed and what we need to be both discussing and taking action upon in order to prevent a 2010 meltdown of our workforce and our economy.
Jana Kemp
Idaho Press-Tribune
Comments on The 2010 Meltdown:
"A realistic and optimistic view of the demand for/supply of talent....This book is loaded with facts and insights."
Yvette Borcia & Gerry Sterns
Sterns & Associates
"Ed Gordon's latest book, The 2010 Meltdown, builds off his earlier success, Skill Wars, in giving the smart reader a 'nine-one-one' emergency wake-up call to the widening gap between unfilled 'Help Wanted' jobs and a workforce unfit for hire.
In his latest book, the author goes beyond the tsunami-like workplace crisis building at the 2010 threshold and spotlights promising solutions. Gordon makes it clear that the 'knowledge worker' will be in demand. The question is, 'Will there be enough knowledge workers to meet the demand?'
The 2010 Meltdown is a must read for community leaders looking to understand this paradigm shift. The author makes a convincing case that those organizations failing in the foresight and fight necessary to make the shift will begin to disappear along with low-skilled jobs."
Michael Metzler
President/CEO
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce
"Read it and spread its call. The data is devastating; the problem clear. We simply aren't educating or training for today's world. Unless we wake up and begin to act now, our economy will inevitably slide and, over time, even our democratic system may be threatened. The solution? Ed Gordon tell us that it does not lie with government-national or local-alone, or business alone, or community action alone, or family alone. It requires what he sees as a change of culture: we must mobilize the energies of all of these elements to stop and reverse the meltdown. We can. But will we?"
Paul J. Miller
Senior Partner
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
"The 2010 Meltdown strikes a much needed chord for a culture change in schools and the way we value young people. Schools must become responsive to the real world. There is time to accomplish change, but is there the political will?"
Joan M. Klaus
Chairman
Illinois College Access Network
"Thoroughly researched. Tightly written. This painfully realistic view of tomorrow's global workforce is provocative, instructive, and hopefully stimulating. An urgent must-read for senior executives, human resource professionals, political leaders, and progressive educators. Learn, be challenged, be inspired. It's all here!"
Roger E. Herman
CEO, The Herman Group
Author of Impending Crisis
"As always, you are right on the money. There is much to learn from every page."
Robert B. Zettler
Vice President
Workforce & Community Development
North Central State College
Mansfield, Ohio
"The 2010 Meltdown predicts that a major business culture shift is underway to balance short-term profit taking with long-term human capital development. Gordon suggests how to measure ROI on human capital investments and why employee training, development and education at all levels will be essential for business innovation and, therefore, business survival."
Peggy Luce
Vice President
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
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Literacy in America: Historic Journey and Contemporary Solutions
by Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon. Foreword by Gerald Gutek.
Publisher: Praeger/Greenwood
This book is the first comprehensive history of how the American people achieved varying degrees of literacy from early colonial times to the modern era. The authors demonstrate that literacy education is not synonymous with schooling. By focusing on people rather than statistics, including literacy among women and minority groups, they explore the literacy agents, methods, and materials used at different times and places throughout the history of the country.
Reviews:
Edward and Elaine Gordon are back with a highly readable monograph/textbook hybrid...[H]ow the Gordons illuminate specifics, and how they compare and contrast places and trends, gives their text an edge in reader–friendliness without sacrificing scholarly rigor. The index and standard bibliography are both thorough... The Gordons really know how to tell stories. Readers will appreciate how they reconstruct the lives of teachers over two centuries, largely in settings outside formal schooling. Scholars and students of the roles of women in the history of education will find a wonderful archive of material.... In their areas of emphasis, and in the book's readability, scholarship, and ease of use as a reference tool, the Gordons succeeded admirably."
–History of Education Quarterly
"A major contribution to the history of literacy with appeal well beyond the scholarly audience. Every teacher of literacy would be enriched by reading it. A strength of the book is its careful attention to regional differences. Throughout, the authors detail how literacy experiences were mediated by geography, religion, race and ethnicity, social class and gender.... The book is rich in gripping anecdotes."
–Journal of American History
"This well–researched history of literacy in the US extends from Colonial New England to the 21st century.... Scholarly historical treatment of a critically important and contemporary topic. Highly recommended. All levels."
–Choice
"The strength of the book is in its variety of first person sources..... These stories and others of approaches to literacy education add color and credibility to more standard histories of education in the United States."
–American Historical Review
"Literacy in America provides a well–documented account of the variety of ways people learned to read and write throughout America's history.... By emphasizing the particular experiences of readers and teachers over more comprehensive discussions of literacy levels, the Gordons stress the various 'journeys' to literacy traversed in different periods of American history and the ways in which these were reinforced by the support of family, religious groups, and the workplace, as well as in the schoolroom. The models they find in the historical patterns of individualized instruction and the responsibility for literacy education shared by many social groups offer intriguing models for addressing the pressing need for more sophisticated and widespread literacy in today's population."
–Anthropology & Education Quarterly
"An extensive, meticulously researched, and superbly organized and presented historical survey of literacy in America.... No definite Education History or American History reference collection can be considered complete without the inclusion of Literacy in America."
–Midwest Book Review
Available from: ABC/Clio Greenwood · 800.368.6868
http://www.abc-clio.com/
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Centuries of Tutoring: A History of Alternative Education in American and Europe
by Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon. Foreword by Gerald Gutek.
Publisher: University Press of America
The book examines both the development of tutoring as a form of education and its influences on "schooling," early childhood education and women's issues. It offers a review of what past educators wrote on their work, the lives of their students, and the wider socio–cultural ramifications during centuries of tutoring. The role of the tutor and the tutor–governess is reviewed in education at home as well as the corollary use of tutors in the school. The nineteenth century in Europe and America witnessed the widespread use of tutors and the gradual adoption of mandatory tax–supported public schooling. The study concludes with a review of the contemporary uses of tutoring and an analysis of its historical contributions to Western education.
Reviews:
"... a book not likely to duplicate any others on one's shelf, and one that suggests a variety of productive applications in research and teaching."
–History of Education Quarterly
"... a fascinating good read, well–researched and documented, scholarly but hardly dry and never boring or tedious. Moreover, it is an essential and significant addition to feminist history and politics."
–Educational Studies
"Historians of education often observe that there are far more to the history of learning than the history of schooling, and it is to Gordon's credit that he has attempted to document this important point."
–The American Historical Review
"In an attempt to 'investigate tutoring's widespread applications throughout the history of childhood in the Western world,' the Gordons make excellent use of historical insight and primary sources to produce a very readable history and an interesting perspective on the development of schooling in general. The emphasis on the one–to–one nature of early education is enlightening, especially the account of how the act of tutoring others helped shape the educational philosophy of some of history's greatest thinkers.... Well–written text and superb reference material in the appendixes and source list."
–Choice
Edward E. Gordon History Presentations
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